MMO's and other PC games are a particular interest of mine. One I spend all too much time doing. Iggep's Blog is where I'll be expressing my thoughts on the various games I play and the industry as a whole.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Whats a poor alt-a-holic to do?

I've found myself avoiding raids lately or hoping that they might end early. You see my guild that I joined in April when I returned to WoW has had a very difficult time progressing in Ulduar-25. At first we seemed to be doing fairly well but guilds that were weeks behind us have now passed us by and we're moribund at 8/13. We endure many wipes on progression nights and the confidence I had in the raid group has all but disappeared. Most fights I'm simply too busy fighting to really notice who are the people having the worst problems, but I certainly notice the results. We'll either lose people early in the fight and have too little DPS to finish the boss off, or casters/ranged/healers will get killed and then you'll start to see the melee die. Whatever the problems are I've become very frustrated and that is really where my alt-a-holism got its claws back into me. Reconstituting raid teams during the Summer Doldrums does not always go smoothly.

I gave up on my Elemental Shaman after a brief stint PVPing where I quickly relearned why I stopped PVPing on him months ago. Not to mention Elemental Shaman have no true AOE capabilities and are too tethered to totems and their mechanics to my liking. Then a few weeks back I finished leveling my Paladin that had been idled around level 45 and found that I ultimately disliked the bursty, cooldown driven nature of the DPS and didn't like the static nature of paladin healing. I then started looking at my Druid again and finished leveling him but found I really don't like the complicated nature of Cat DPS now in raiding circumstances, though I love Resto and think Tanking is just fine. I'll most likely continue playing my Druid as Feral tank/Resto, but I still feel restless. I like DPS the most and want something to do.

So Paladin is out. Shaman is out. Where's that leave me? I have a 70 Warlock, a 28 Rogue, 24 Warrior and a baby Mage to choose from as well. I doubt seriously I'm willing to level the Mage after the horrible experience I had with the first few levels. Blizzard killed baby casters with the manaregennerf a few patches ago. Basically kill something and sit and regen for 30-60 seconds. I have a 70 Mage on another server and he wasn't half as hard to level as this new Mage is. Yeah, no thanks Blizzard.

The Warrior and Rogue are certainly options. I have a 60 Warrior on another server and used to raid with him back in Vanilla WoW and have a 70 Rogue on another server as well. So I'm familiar with these two classes to some extent. One thing that concerns me with leveling pure DPS classes over a hybrid class is the possible downtime required between fights due to damage taken and the inability to heal it. I hate downtime, which is one of the reasons why I love hybrid classes so much. At least Warriors have something of a self-healing ability in the Fury tree with Bloodthirst, but Rogues have none that I am aware of. Rogues have stuns to avoid damage, yet every reputable source available tells you to level as Combat which doesn't really rely on stuns.

The Warlock is a another option though I dropped him back in the waning days of BC for my Shaman because I grew disheartened with the class. I might decide to revisit the class yet I'm just not feeling terribly excited about it for some reason.

Give me a class that wears plate, can stealth and has terrific AOE capability and we'd be in business! Now that I think about it, Blizzard just give DKs vanish and stealth and we'll call it a day!